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Perun Tank Destroyer
"They call that a tank?" :- Anonymous Perun gunner, sighting a Tsunami MBT Tactical Analysis *'A gun on legs': The Perun Tank Destroyer is effectively a walking gun. Helpless while on the move, the Perun is nothing to be trifled with once deployed into turret mode. *'A walking turret': With its TX-21 Tesla Canister Gun, the Perun Tank Destroyer lives up to its name, blowing apart most tanks in the first hit and shutting down tanks that aren't. *'Pure anti-armour': Against everything else, the Perun is effectively dead without other forces to back it up. Infantry are small enough to avoid the TX-21's shots, and aircraft can easily pick off the Perun, especially when it is deployed and immobile. *'The big gun': Following several months in the Gulag, one of the original design team members figured out how to fit a Vacuum Imploder shell inside a gun barrel. After being released, he has been able to develop a prototype design, examples of which are being issued to trusted Perun crews for testing. while lacking intercontinental range, such shells are no less destructive than Tesla canisters, and can even pull the enemy vehicle into itself, doing damage over time. Operational History The Perun Tank Destroyer could easily be described as a happy accident by anyone except for its design team. In the early days of the Third World War, the Soviet military was looking for any kind of upper hand they could possibly get over the Allied forces. The mighty Soviet army was nearly uncontested in its claim of continental Europe, but those in charge were all too aware that much of the Allied power structure was stationed in Great Britain. Previous attempts at invading the island nation had all failed miserably, as while the Soviets had a powerful navy, the British knew how to defend against an amphibious assault - indeed, it was all they had ever had to face. So the Soviets had a dilemma - charge the guns over seas, sustaining massive casualties, or begin designing weapons specifically to best the British Isles? Naturally, they decided to do both. Early design concepts for the Perun intended for it to be a firing platform for a long-range Vacuum Imploder warhead. A stationary Imploder silo took far too much time to set up and was vulnerable while arming, not to mention that it could not be relocated easily. A mobile platform would be able to stay on to move constantly, and furthermore its ability to relocate would allow one, in theory, to strike anywhere in the world. The concept greatly interested the Soviet brass. It was all for naught, of course, as the KDB-16 never made it out of the prototype phase. Originally a quadruped design, the rear legs had to be replaced with a massive wheeled segment to house the engine and support the warhead. As such, when not deployed it could do nothing but drag itself along the ground with its front legs - a serious blow to what was supposed to be an incredibly mobile vehicle. This, coupled with its weak armour (a Soviet general was famously quoted as saying that "a single soldier with a rocket launcher and no depth perception would pose a serious threat to it", referencing its size and lack of protection) meant that the advantages did not at all outweigh the disadvantages. The KDB-16 was scrapped and its designers sent to Siberia for re-education. Until, that is, the invasion of the Empire of the Rising Sun. The mighty tank divisions of the Soviet army found themselves quickly outpaced by the many lighter vehicles, prompting the Soviet Army to demand the development of more mobile mechanized units with which to crush the cowardly Japanese forces. Naturally, many of the new designs were walkers, as the ability to traverse all terrain without difficulty was a massive boon to mobility, and (as the success of the Sickle proved) they could still be armed with as much firepower as a similarly-sized tank division. With this in mind, the KDB-16 designs were reevaluated - redesign it for use at combat level, emphasize the walker attributes, and perhaps this massive monster can be put to use as almost a sister-vehicle to the famous Apocalypse tank. Thus, the KDB-17 Perun was born - a walker chassis capable of deploying into an incredibly stable firing platform (now immobile, because to hell with that engine), and a weapon that would make its opponents cower in fear; now a large calibre anti-tank gun, firing tesla canister rounds that damaged and short circuited enemy tanks. While still lacking in armour and somewhat short on speed, the KDB-17 - dubbed the Perun, after the god of lightning in Slavic myth - showed its worth in early testing when it not only far outranged nearly all other Soviet vehicles, but could cripple a Hammer tank with a single shot, utterly annihilating it with the second. The Tesla canisters were designed to cause severe damage to all systems in a vehicle, and they outperformed all expectations when it was discovered that an affected vehicle would actually be shut down temporarily after a direct hit. Though the cannon could not be fired unless the Perun was deployed, it could theoretically take on ANY single vehicle and defeat it one-on-one. Criticisms that the gun was ineffective against infantry (the canister was not especially accurate and was impact fused) fell on deaf ears when top-ranking generals heard what a Perun could do against an Apocalypse tank. When the Perun turned the Battle of Berlin on its head in its first appearance on the battlefield, the Soviets knew they had designed something truly special. Category:Units Category:Units Originating from Ukraine